40-Year Veterans of Faith Honored by Washington Family Church

Douglas BurtonDecember 17, 2009

They were the generation that came forth -- during the 60s. They
rambled and hitchhiked out of a decade known for Hendrix, Hair,
hashish, hemp, acid, free love, Abbie Hoffman, Chairman Mao, SDS,
antiwar rallies and tie-dyed opinions, and most found their way into
a New-Age-sounding group called "the Unified Family," an
obscure, brave little band of seekers huddled around Korean
missionaries called "Papa Choi," "Miss Kim,"
"Colonel Pak," and "David S.C. Kim." None of them
knew that 40 years later their little group would be the most
successful new religion in history.

Or that they would be feted as "heroes of Unificationism"
by their family, friends, and colleagues for staying the course, but
that's exactly what happened to 51 of these 40-year veterans of faith
at a celebratory banquet in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, on December 13,
2009.

Rev. Randy Francis, District Director for the states surrounding
Washington, D.C., awarded each of the honorees certificates
designating them as Ambassadors of Peace for their work as agents of
peace. The banquet was held in part to mark the 40-year anniversary
of the first Marriage Blessing in North America -- at the Upshur
Street Church Center in Washington, D.C., in February 1969. The 90
guests who gathered at the Woo Lae Oak restaurant chuckled and sighed
at the testimonies from Nobuko Peemoeller, Pamela Stein, Dan
Fefferman, Reiko Jenkins, Diane Weber, Yuji Yokoyama, Sun Ae Moon and
Mike Leone. Testimonies of many others were printed out and
distributed.

Rev. Kevin McCarthy, a former pastor of the Washington Church,
served as Master of Ceremonies. Ms. Emiko Nadimi performed "Climb
Every Mountain," taken from The Sound of Music and "Memories,"
from the musical Cats. At the close of the program, Ms. Clair Stein,
a daughter-in-law to Mrs. Pamela Stein, sang the Celtic hymn "Be
Thou My Vision."

The Hand of God

The testimonies made clear that the unseen hand of God was moving
in the daily lives of those early disciples. Dan Fefferman's written
testimony at the banquet reveals how in early 1971 he got the words
and melody for the song "Generation of Righteousness" in
just a few minutes: "We had this center on Warring Street and I
remember praying to God: 'give me a song that the whole movement can
sing.' I went up to the attic, and 15 minutes later I came down with
'Generation of Righteousness.' I'm sure some of my Russian Jewish
ancestors were involved in getting me that melody, and who knows who
else. It's one of the more complex songs I've written, and yet it
took the shortest time to write. So I have to say it was a work of
inspiration."

Pam Stein told the gathering that in 1969 she was a "free
spirit" wandering around Europe searching for the Messiah: "One
day, I was meditating under a fig tree in the mountains of Spain,
praying to know the Will of God, when I received that I must return
to America to meet the Messiah. But I didn't want to go back to
America; I wanted to go to India. I argued with God and then in the
days following, very quickly, bad fortune found me. I recognized my
error, and immediately hitchhiked to the nearest airport (Barcelona)
with only my backpack and sleeping bag. I arrived home in Berkeley,
California, on July 4, 1969. It was forty days later that I arrived
at the Ashby House Center in Berkeley, having been witnessed to by a
least a dozen different members since my arrival. When I came to hear
Lecture One that August 15th evening, it was Dan Fefferman who opened
the door to welcome me."

"I was like a floating piece of wood."

Nobuko Peemoeller related how, at the age of 18, she was
determined to spend her life as a social rebel. She vowed in 1967 to
her high-school buddies that she would never marry and immersed
herself in writings of communists and proponents of women's
liberation. "But when I found God, I found my place, and my
value," she said. In her written testimony she explained: "I
was struggling with all kinds of questions about life. "Who am
I?" "What is the purpose of my life?" "Where am I
going after life?" I was like a floating piece of wood going in
any direction a current took me. Those were my dark days of struggle.
I never forgot the emptiness I felt in my heart. I was a very
rebellious young girl. When I heard the Divine Principle for the
first time, I was so shocked and excited. When I finished listening
to all the Principle, I was not able to deny God's existence
logically any longer."

Mrs. Sun Ae Park Moon, a daughter of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's cousin,
shared about the suffering she experienced growing up in a family
that attended Reverend Moon years before the first Marriage Blessing
Ceremony in 1960. She spoke candidly of growing up "feeling
abandoned" by her parents after they invested so many hours in
church work and church-sponsored businesses. After a life-threatening
illness at age 15 she says she had a change of heart and dedicated
herself to the church: "At age 15 I opened my heart and attended
a workshop to ponder whether I should stay in the movement. I decided
the church was not bad. I joined the Collegiate Association for the
Research of Principles (CARP) and decided to be a righteous
daughter."

Mike Leone, a former pastor of the Washington church, was the last
to give a testimony, which he titled, "Two Words." He wrote
that in 1972 "one day I was walking down 16th Street in D.C.
near our Upshur house and -- bingo! God actually spoke to little old
me. I knew it was Him, because the voice encompassed my whole being
-- spirit, body, all of me. He only said two words and has never
spoken to me again since. They were: 'I'm lonely.' After that, I
started bawling like a baby and said, 'That can't be right -- You are
God Almighty -- how can You be lonely?' Well, those two words changed
my life and kept me around for almost 42 years. I came to understand
a little about the heart of God and the heart of True Father and True
Mother -- I couldn't easily do things that might break their hearts
even more."

Many a head nodded as Mr. Leone shared the observation that, after
40 years, "the days still go by slowly, but the years have flown
by."